Live in the other Eden Project

Tim Smit, the man behind those Cornish domes, is helping to transform more clay pits – this time into an eco-town nearby

The flooded Baal clay pit will become part of a pioneering green housing scheme (Baxter Bradford)
The Cornish town of St Austell is not on the well-trodden tourist trail. You
can see its distinctive landscape of flat hills and conical peaks from the
A30 en route to the surf, but the nearest most visitors get to this
down-at-heel clay-mining centre is the Eden Project, five miles away. Make
the effort, however, and you will be rewarded with sea views over Cornwall’s
south coast and one of the most spectacularly strange landscapes in the
country.

Known as the Cornish Alps, and built up over the centuries from mining
aggregate, the terrain is moon-like — one clay pit, called Baal, appeared in
a 1971 episode of Doctor Who as the surface of planet Uxarieus. Today, it’s
greener, but still gravelly and unearthly. The quarries themselves are
flooded, creating still lakes of pale turquoise that only add to the surreal
look of the area.